


run from the lights, run from the night.

by commonemergency



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, university dan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 02:31:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13308531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commonemergency/pseuds/commonemergency
Summary: "This isn’t his first hangover but it always feels like the first time whenever he drinks too much,"or Dan is hungover and insecure and Phil still loves him anyway.





	run from the lights, run from the night.

**Author's Note:**

> i had three other fics i wanted to write and upload but it didn't end up happening. they were all holiday/new years eve related and i just couldn't do it. 
> 
> although this does stem from me being hungover the day after new years eve and thinking about a university dan and how he might have reacted after a night of too many drinks and a boyfriend who loves you regardless of embarrassing texts. 
> 
> brief mentions of nausea/vomit but not descriptive.

Sometimes the hangover is so great all Dan can do is lay on the couch with nothing on but his pants and an oversized t-shirt. He’s clutching one of Phil’s stuffed animals because it gives him something to hold onto while Phil does the many adult things that Dan is incapable of right now. He sleeps on and off, tossing and turning on the couch, unable to get comfortable but refusing to sleep on Phil’s bed because it doesn’t have a TV in it and he needs the background noise when Phil is gone. He doesn’t know why he drank so much last night, and he doesn’t know why he texted Phil so many times, asking him _if he still loved him, even if he was like this._

Phil didn’t answer all the text messages, and the ones he did reply to were with a heart. He can’t be mad at him. Dan is young, and doesn’t know where his limit starts and where it ends. He gets up for the sixth or seventh time today and the glass of water that he finished is refilled with a box of biscuits next to him. Phil is gone, but his presence is always here in some way. 

Dan feels weak. His body hurts in places that he doesn’t understand. This isn’t his first hangover but it always feels like the first time whenever he drinks too much, swearing that he’ll stop at some point, but ending up in a taxi, with his head against the cool of the window on his way to Phil’s apartment because he’s close and he’s safe. He feels like shit, and he needs a shower. He drinks the entire glass of water and eats one of the biscuits but gets up and walks to Phil’s bedroom and grabbing a clean pair of pants from _his_ drawer. The thought still makes him giddy that he has a drawer, not just one drawer, but a few, for whenever he stays over, which is often. 

While he waits for the hot water he takes a look at himself in the mirror and sees his bloodshot eyes, his hair is curled in many places unsure of what to do with himself. He feels dizzy just standing there. He undresses slowly and gets in the shower and feels immediate comfort with the warm water running down his body. He’s too big to sit under the water like he used to do when he was a kid, and the thought makes him sad. He’s an adult now, that can do stupid things like getting drunk, and calling your boyfriend multiple times because he’s on your mind. 

He regrets it. He hasn’t even looked at his phone yet, so he pushes the thoughts back and focus on the way that the water hits his skin. He blindly reaches for the body wash and lathers himself in it, wanting to drown the smell of the eleven o’clock pre-game, the twelve o’clock vodka shots, and the three o’clock tequila shots that were never a good idea but they did it anyway. The last thing that Dan remembers drinking is Jameson, and grabbing the cigarette, because even though he hates smoking -- it seemed like a good thing to do. 

University was proving to be every stereotypical thing that his mates said it would be. Except. Except maybe without all the conflict he was feeling, and all the thoughts about the future, and the fact that he wanted to do one thing but was stuck doing another thing. 

He grabs the shampoo and gently massages it in his hair, and the bad thoughts never really go away, but it’s getting a little better, and he’s feeling a little bit more normal. The conditioner detangles those thoughts as best as it can, and he’ll react accordingly to what he said last night, and it’ll be fine, even if it feels a little bit embarrassing.  


He steps out of the shower and dries up. The mirror is foggy and Dan thinks that maybe that’s a good thing. Sometimes progress wasn’t meant to be seen externally. He changes into clean pants and clothes, stealing Phil’s PJ bottoms and he picks his mess up. He feels better. He just misses Phil who’s been gone for hours. 

Dan grabs his phone off the ground and he sees messages from the groupchat that had gone out. No one asks where Dan went last night because he just left. He seemed to do that a lot and people eventually stopped asking. He never explained to them that he had a boyfriend. Or that he even liked men. It was often times that Dan was the listener, whenever they had gone out and drank too much he listened because it was what he was good at; being a place of shelter for people but never finding that shelter in anyone else but Phil, because he was comfortable with him but uncomfortable with everyone else. Dan knew that if he wanted to survive in university he needed to get out of his shell more but it was hard because he didn’t know where anyone stood on topics that meant something to him. 

He deleted the group messages and then found the messages he had sent to Phil. 

They were as embarrassing as he thought they would be. Mainly asking if Phil would still love him even if he didn’t know what he was doing with his life. It wasn’t that eloquent, there were a lot of typos and some of the words didn’t make sense. 

The texts that broke Dan’s heart were the ones asking if Phil felt like he was getting everything he wanted out of this relationship, and then saying, ‘ _never mind_ ’ shortly after. It didn’t happen a lot, when Dan would question those kinds of things, but when it did, he felt like shit for days after. 

Dan turns his phone off and goes to the kitchen and turns the kettle on to make tea. The sun will be going down soon and all he’s accomplished today is a shower. Phil will be coming home soon and he’ll have to apologize for acting the way that he did when he got to his apartment. It doesn’t feel good, but it’ll make him feel better if he just got it over with. 

He grabs the milk from the fridge and makes his cup of tea and sits on the chair with his mug in right in the middle of the small table. The telly has been on low and he can hear Phil’s neighbours laugh at something funny and he wonders if their day is going better than his. (It probably is). He thinks a lot about the future, if one day they’ll be those kind of neighbours that have more good days than bad. He thinks if he’ll get his degree in Law and still be doing Youtube. He thinks if he’ll have to give up on one. He thinks if there has to be a choice, or if he can do both. He doesn’t know, but it’s overwhelming. 

His fingers tap against the mug and the headache is still there, and his body still hurts, but he’s feeling a little bit more human than a couple minutes ago and he supposes that has to count for something. Phil opens the door with handfuls of food, both grocery and takeout and Dan smiles, getting up to help him, grabbing what he can.

“Hey.” Phil says with a small smile, placing the takeout next to Dan’s cup. He looks at Dan and his fingers catch a curl that’s been in his face for god knows how long. “You look better.” He says, grabbing something from the grocery bag and he sees that it’s ginger ale and ibuprofen. 

“I got you a couple of things, and food.” Phil places a hand over Dan’s forehead like he has a fever, it makes Dan snort, reaching up to grab Phil’s hand to just hold it. 

“Never drinking again?” Phil jokes, opening the can of ginger ale and pouring it into a glass and taking ibuprofen out of the package and dropping two in Dan’s hands. 

Dan takes them gratefully, even though he hates taking pills, he does it anyway. He watches as Phil puts things away in his kitchen, admiring that he’s so accustomed to it already and when he turns around to Dan staring at him he smiles and it’s enough to break him. He gulps and he wraps his arms around Phil who stands there frozen for a second before familiar arms wrap around him in a hug that was so needed. Phil still smells like Phil, and it’s a comforting smell, and he can’t think of a better word that describes him other than _comforting_ and maybe, _warm_. 

The words feel stuck in his throat, but he has to say it.

“I’m sorry for last night.” He pulls away, and the light from outside is gone and it’s a dark blue sky, but Manchester is still beautiful. “... And for texting you so much.” Dan rubs the back of his neck nervously, feeling vulnerable. 

Phil smiles, cupping Dan’s face, his thumb carressing the skin that he can touch. 

“It’s okay.” He says, laughing a little, “I’m flattered that you think of me.” 

Dan had blushed, wanting to roll his eyes. “I always think of you.” Sometimes being in love felt like this. The feeling that everything was too much, like something was stuck in your throat, so many things that you wanted to say but couldn’t, and no amount of touching and kissing could feel enough. Sometimes love hurt because of how much he felt it. 

“I’m mainly sorry for all the deep, typo’d, questions that are too broad to answer over text.” His eyes look at the floor for a brief moment before flicking back to Phil’s.

Dan sometimes felt like he was never going to be enough for Phil, and it would manifest into him thinking that no matter what he did it wouldn’t ever amount to anything. He felt like Phil would lose interest in him, because Dan was too loud, too opinionated, too crass, too awkward, just… _too much_. Maybe because he had always been told that, Phil would realize it too. 

He sometimes thought of how he’d survive the breakup if it ever came down to Phil leaving. He survived a lot of things, but Phil felt like _it_ for him. He was the one that he wanted to do life with, and it’d be heartbreaking- but he could do it. 

“You’re in your head.” Phil smiles softly, his hands hadn’t moved from his face and Dan feels like he could cry because everything hurt. 

“Yeah.” Dan says with an even smaller, sad, smile. “I do that a lot.” 

“That’s okay.” Phil says with a shrug. “And it’s okay -- about the texts. I think it’s just something we’ll need to work on.” 

And it’s just like that, when all the anxiety would build up and it’d overflow, but never in the way that Dan expected. 

“We’re both new at this.” Phil had pressed his lips to Dan’s, and he felt like he could melt into the kiss. 

“Eat and bed?” Phil’s stomach growls and Dan laughed and nodded his head. 

The night ends with Indian food, and more tea and water, and Dan curls up against Phil instead of his stuffed animals. 

They stare at invisible stars on the ceiling and make wishes upon them. 

“The first time I ever really, _really_ , drank I had skinny dipped with the rest of my housemates. Someone had taken pictures of all of us and hung them up in our kitchen. I’m pretty sure I liked one of the guys and tried to confess it to him, but I kept using dumb hypotheticals and further confused the guy and he never understood it. The morning after wasn’t glamorous, I threw up everything and took days to recover.” Phil whispers, and they both laugh at the thought. 

“University is a weird transitional time of being able to do whatever you want, but also regretting a lot of it. You’re doing okay.” Phil had pressed his lips against the side of Dan’s head, and it felt good to be loved on after a day of hell.

“I’m never drinking again.” Dan says, and they both laugh. 

_“Yeah right.”_

Phil promises that he’ll take care of him anyway. 

The future was an overwhelming thing, but right here in this space, it didn’t seem so scary anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic gave me flashbacks to freshmen year of university, maybe for you as well, lol. thanks for reading!
> 
> comments/kudos appreciated! 
> 
> talk to me on tumblr/twitter: **@nihilismdan.**


End file.
